Blog

            We’re almost at the end of October and here in Houston we’re still experiencing eighty plus degree temperatures although recently we’ve had some pleasant evenings down into the sixties. Tomorrow the weatherman promises a change. A cool front will bring temperatures into the forties with highs in the sixties. That will be a welcome change indeed.

            When I first moved to Houston more than thirty years ago, the standing joke was if you don’t like the weather, just wait five minutes. Even though the weather might change quickly, that usually meant unexpected rain or a few degrees hotter or more humid. Adaptation to this climate has challenged residents for generations, and they typically rallied eventually to build the largest domed stadium of its time that was completely air conditioned: the Astrodome, once considered a wonder of the modern world. Its days, unfortunately, may be numbered and very possibly it will be torn down though many would like to preserve it in some fashion. After numerous rejected proposals – funding any kind of makeover is the real issue – there’s not much left as options.

            Change is inevitable. Every time I visit my home town, which is less often these days, I find that something else that is part of my childhood memory is forever gone. There’s more and there’s less. This happens almost everywhere. Think of the small towns that have slowly disappeared from the American landscape. Thank goodness for the artists that have chronicled many of these places sometimes simply as part of their everyday experience and sometimes as reference to a receding past.

            Humans in general tend to love their history. The young sometimes have to learn later in life how important that is as they gradually watch their own familiar landscape change before their eyes. In school they may chafe against history courses, but at some point they recognize that their own life experience is their personal history, and that tends to grow in significance as the years pass by. They hear their elders talk about the old days, which can truly seem ancient and perhaps a little magical when well told, but often these tales seem a kind of sad lament that to younger ears are a little boring. Given time, though, these youngsters will begin telling their own tales of the past with more than a little reverence.

            Art has chronicled much of the past sometimes intentionally and sometimes simply as the by-product of an artist’s expression of what he or she experiences in the moment. These visions show moments or thoughts frozen in time, but any of them can spring to life again in the mind of the astute observer and sympathetic audience. What we often see is that dress or custom or outward appearance may change, but the spirit of people and place has consistency and continuity. Even as anthropological geneticists determine that there are few variations between genes of our ancient ancestors and modern Homo sapiens, we intuitively connect with those from a few or a thousand generations ago. We may love our modern conveniences, but at heart we are still connected to our basic instincts and essential needs. Art reminds us of this.